When 'Service Animals' Crash Your Event

Today, I find myself in the rare position of taking the side of a couple of readers against Judith Martin's reply to someone concerned that a "support animal" is going to ruin an evening of dinner and the opera:

Image by Mental Health America (MHA), via Pexels, license.

My husband and I, along with a friend, pre-purchased hard-to-get opera tickets. We've looked forward to attending for many months.

However, we just learned that our companion intends to bring her extremely unruly "comfort" poodle -- not only to the opera, but also to a lovely restaurant for dinner beforehand. This dog is hyperactive and annoying; it is not a service animal that our friend needs for seeing or hearing.

Now that we know the dog is going, we want to bow out of the engagement, but would prefer to do it in the least hurtful way. Should we simply say we won't go if the dog comes along?

Miss Manners offers a couple of white lie type options which would, granted, spare the feelings of the other party, but I agree with the following comments:

Since you purchased the tickets together I think you should just level with her. "When we planned this event together, we did not realize that you would be bringing Rover. We're not comfortable with that and are wondering if you would consider not bringing him." If she refuses, then go to the opera and dinner on your own and let the dog be her problem as if she were any other attendee that you don't know.

And:

I agree that LW needs to tell her the truth. It's akin to a bait and switch - same thing as when someone "invites" you to dinner, then tells you to bring the main course. "Oh I'm sorry, that's different than what we originally agreed to; we can't do that."

Thanks to a change in regulations, "support animals" are becoming very common, and even if the government protected the property rights of people affected, there would be a need for etiquette to evolve around this new aspect of social interactions.

This is doubly so, given that the government and a small cottage industry are ganging up to make sure more of us are having to deal with animals in situations we might not expect.

The type of remedy and reason for it suggested by the two commenters are spot-on. (In the above case, I would also consider changing my date of attendance if the other party still insisted on dragging her noisy dog into the opera.)

In addition, hosts of events should take cognizance of the possibility that people may decide to bring animals along and, if they object to that, make it known in advance.

In the face of petty tyranny and of thoughtlessness, the truth can set you free.

-- CAV

Hezbollah Gets an Overdue Call

Yesterday, in perhaps the most enemy-focused precision mass attack in history, Israel set off the pagers of Hezbollah simultaneously, causing them to explode. The booby-trapped pagers injured thousands of terrorists (including Iran's "ambassador" to Lebanon) and killed several. While there were some injured bystanders and one death (the daughter of a terrorist), these are on Hezbollah's hands, given their year-long campaign of indiscriminate rocket fire into Israel.

Predictably, many "journalists" have opted to ignore the fact that Hezbollah has been at war against Israel, and pretend instead that this sophisticated operation was an unprovoked "escalation" in the conflict. Actually, this is both long overdue and in danger of not being enough unless Israel quickly capitalizes on the chaos this will sow, by acting to defeat Iran's terrorist proxy.

Unfortunately, the Biden Administration is of a similar view, having warned Israel not to "initiate" what is, in fact, an ongoing war.

I am not ashamed to admit that I am still ... buzzing ... a day later. I think this is due in about equal parts to being glad to see some measure of justice meted out against this evil organization, and admiration for the sophisticated way this was done, via a supply chain attack against a foe trying to increase the security of its communications:

The plot appears to have been in the making for months they said.

And another security source said that up to three grams of explosives were hidden in the new pagers and had gone "undetected" by Hezbollah for months.

In response, the Taiwan-based company Gold Apollo said the pagers were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT based in Budapest which is licensed to use the firm's brand.

Speaking outside the company's offices in New Taipei, Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe.

Elsewhere, I read a description of the Hungarian company that made it sound very shady -- which it would have to be if there is any shred of decency in the world: A mainstream supplier would, I hope, be loathe to sell directly to a terorrist organization. In such a fact would lie ample opportunity for Israel to set up the kind of puppet company that would be able to pull off something like this.

In the bigger picture, this is not enough. Israel risks wasting the momentum of this surprise attack unless it milks every last bit of intelligence out of it that it can, and quickly uses it to crush Iran's proxy, and as much as possible before the next U.S. administration takes office. I am sure either will pressure Israel to stop defending itself -- be it from sympathy with Islamists (Harris) or a desire to pretend that cutting a deal can somehow pacify religious fanatics (Trump).

-- CAV

Did the Electoral College Dumb Down the GOP?

Richard Hanania makes a "conservative case" for abolishing the Electoral College, which is interesting for two reasons. First, as one can see from at least ten posts here on the subject over the years, it is typically a leftist project to do this. Second, while I disagree that doing so is necessarily a good idea, the post does make some very interesting points on what I would call an emerging phenomenon of our system of electing Presidents in the context of cultural deterioration since the Founding.

The gist of Hanania's argument is that, by effectively disenfranchising millions of Republican voters in deep blue states, while disproportionately amplifying the preferences of voters in the declining Midwest, the Electoral College is incentivizing the GOP to cater to older (hence, more change-resistant), less-educated, and more passive voters than it otherwise would.

Two passages should suffice to get this point across. First, here is how more educated, younger, more dynamic voters from "blue states" end up getting ignored:

People usually think of the senate and electoral college in terms of how much voice they give to conservatives versus liberals, or rural versus urban residents. Yet these institutions also change the balance of power within our two major political tribes.

Consider that in 2020, the state that provided the most votes to Trump wasn’t Florida or Texas, but California. Trump got more votes in New York than Nebraska, Idaho, West Virginia, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Alaska combined.

...

[T]he bulk of right-wing voters in blue states aren’t WSJ writers or tech visionaries but regular Americans who don’t want to ban abortion but dislike crime and wokeness and want lower taxes. It is they who are most disenfranchised by the electoral college, and the fact that Republicans don’t feel the need to appeal to them stops their numbers from expanding. [bold added]

And second, with the continued decline of the Rust Belt, the type of voters there has been changing:

I think the outsized role that the Midwest now plays in our politics due to electoral college considerations has been a quite negative development. This is a region that is conservative in the worst sense. As the US deindustrialized, many people moved to areas with nicer weather and better economic opportunities. The ones who stayed in places like Michigan and Wisconsin are disproportionately passive and want to be taken care of. If there was no electoral college, then a citizen moving from Wisconsin to Texas doesn’t make his vote less valuable. But as things stand, he ceases to matter in presidential elections, and candidates continue to court his poorer and less ambitious brother who stayed home. Republicans in the Trump era have been losing ground in states that are younger and more dynamic like Colorado, Arizona, Georgia, and Virginia, which ironically grew in the first place due to a history of conservative economic policies, while gaining ground in the Midwest, turning former blue states into swing states (Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania), and what were previously swing states reliably red (Ohio and Iowa). Florida is one major exception as a state that has done well while trending red instead of blue. [bold added]

These are good observations, but as much as I wish the GOP (or either party, really) gave a fig about voters like me, I have serious reservations about ditching the Electoral College.

Without going into a lengthy analysis, I'll just list my reservations below. Broadly, I'd say my objections fall into two categories: (1) the proposal is a band-aid for a symptom of a deeper problem, and (2) the proposal could cause other big problems we simply don't have yet.

Here they are, all together. I think it's easy enough to see which category each would fall into without me having to segregate them:

• The Electoral College was originally intended to be something of a deliberative body, rather than a coarser-grained version of a popular vote. This change has caused it to become more "democratic" in the bad sense of the term, namely that it is not populated by the best each state can offer, but by proxies chosen based on the popular whim of the moment. Perhaps, rather than abolishing it, we should consider making it more deliberative again.
• Even if the Electoral College were returned to something more like it was originally intended to be, the problem would remain that politics flows from culture, which is a product of the philosophical premises most people hold (usually implicitly). This means that more benighted states are more likely to choose more benighted electors, but far from being a reason to abolish the electoral college, it's an argument that the problem lies deeper than that particular institution.
• Speaking of which: Hanania's whole argument assumes a two-party system. I have heard -- I don't know where -- that the parties in our system are analogous to coalitions in parliamentary systems. This seems like an imperfect analogy, as there seems much less fluidity over time. Nevertheless, might such a radical change to our system lead to more instability than we might bargain for?
• Related, the odds of a tie would go from minuscule to zero if we abolished the Electoral College. Considering the poor quality of the choices in our current race, I wouldn't want a tie to be impossible. I like the idea that either one of these clowns can enter office unable to pretend to have a mandate.
• Speaking of mandates, as imperfect as the current operation of the electoral college is, it does avert the need for runoffs and prevents us from regularly having Presidents elected by mere pluralities. Since the President is not the same thing as a Prime Minister and is our commander-in-chief, it is good to have a way to quickly and decisively choose a winner, mandate or not. At the very least, abolishment of the Electoral College would need coupling with something like ranked-choice voting.
• Hanania's disenfranchisement argument to the contrary, the electoral college preserves the strength of the individual voter by requiring candidates to appeal to broader sections of the country. In this election, if either party had fielded a candidate with a more centrist platform and who could be bothered to reach beyond his base, is there any doubt such a candidate could still win in a blowout?
• The Electoral College quarantines electoral disputes.

My weakest-looking argument would be preservation of voting strength, but I think the poor quality of the Trump-Harris choice is what's making it look weak. A traditional Republican would walk all over Harris, and a Clintonesque or even center-left Democrat would do the same to Trump.

That said, the problems Hanania raises demonstrate rather starkly the dependence of our form of government on a populace that can appreciate and uphold it.

-- CAV

Trump's Job Was: Put Harris on the Spot

Taking their lead from the Whiner-in-Chief, the conservative commentariat has been complaining about leftist bias ever since Trump managed to lose the debate to Kamala Harris.

In one of the less ridiculous pieces, David Harsanyi correctly notes that Kamala Harris neither explained her positions to the American people, nor was pressed into doing so by the moderators:

Harris' campaign contends she no longer supports policies of the Green New Deal. And that's fine. But it would probably be helpful to know what initially led her to back the elimination of fossil fuel energy production, the near-banning of meat and air travel, the retrofitting of "every building in America," and a government-guaranteed job, home and "economic security" for all who are "unable or unwilling" to work.

Indeed, not only it would have been helpful for undecided voters to know the answers to such questions, they would have opened up new lines of attack for her debate opponent or opportunities for him to explain why his proposals (whatever they are) would be preferable.

Instead, Trump lapped up the bait Harris laid out for him, lost his composure, and famously started ranting about immigrants eating dogs.

Granted, one role many partisan pundits take up is to help their champions make cases for themselves or attack the opponents of said champions, but at some point, one begins to wonder: What would it take to cause someone to admit 'our guy/gal' is a weak candidate?

It's been done in the past to great effect, such as when Louisianans rallied around the slogan, Vote for the crook: It's important as they defeated David Duke's gubernatorial bid.

Trump was on that stage, with moderators he claimed later to regard as 'lightweights' and a weak opponent whose position on the last administration should have been easy to turn into a massive liability: Why didn't he ask the questions Harsanyi is asking? Why didn't he -- as Thomas Sowell recently urged -- "[address] the voting public as if they were adults who could understand an issue -- if you explained it to them in plain English"? Why has he failed to do any of these things the whole time?

Conservatives such as Harsanyi have a decision to make in light of such ineptitude: Explain to voters why, despite such obvious shortcomings, we should nevertheless vote for Trump, or cut their losses. The latter might well entail campaigning against Trump and helping non-leftists prepare to thwart the worst parts of her agenda, whatever that turns out to be.

-- CAV

Four on Francine

A Friday Hodgepodge

Once again, dealing with a hurricane taught me a few things...

1. Hurricane Francine was the first storm we've had to deal with since moving to New Orleans. It was also as close to a surprise as a storm has ever been to me, and I plan to keep it that way.

There had been hints that something could develop in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico the week before, but I didn't appreciate how close that really is. The storm had barely organized Monday, but it was clear that we might need to prepare and leave before Wednesday.

We did alright considering, but I will never again fail to top off our gas on any weekend with something brewing down there, and weather patterns that will send it in our general direction.

Gas stations were closed or running out that Monday and we were lucky to be able to fill up as quickly as we still did.

2. One thing that will help me know to pay attention will be the weather. A cold front had caused the weather to be noticeably cooler in the morning the week before, and part of the southern trailing edge of that front lingered off Mexico and contributed to the development of this storm from a tropical wave that drifted into the same area.

I'm no meteorologist, but... I've seen storms develop from trailing edges of cold fronts over warm water enough times over the years that I'll take cool weather at this time of the year as a cue to pay more attention.

Back on the Atlantic coast of Florida, I saw this occur to our northeast, and it wasn't generally a concern. Ends of cold fronts now land in hot water southwest of us, so it's a signal to start paying closer attention.

3. The National Hurricane Center is experimenting with a new format for its famed cone graphic, which extends watch/warning shading inland from the coast.

Overall, I like the idea, but there might be some work yet to do:

The Experimental Cone (Image by the National Hurricane Center, public domain.)

Lastly, a word about continuity. We try to refrain from making frequent changes to the watches or warnings in effect for a specific area, and that includes not discontinuing watches and warnings soon after they were issued, or changing between tropical and non-tropical watches and warnings in the middle of an event. This can mean that even when there are shifts or changes to the forecast, watches and warnings for an area may remain in effect for a while longer until we're absolutely certain the risk of strong winds has diminished. Why do we do this? Imagine if each time you go to your doctor, you're given a different diagnosis for a health problem, or prescribed a different medication to treat it. You might start to lose trust in your doctor, or at the very least not know what to believe. A consistent message from your doctor, with a gradual evolution of your treatment over time, is likely to instill more faith in his or her expertise. Our philosophy is the same. We tend to make incremental and gradual changes to our forecasts and the watches and warnings in effect, which in the long-run makes them more trustworthy. [bold added]

Because Francine formed somewhat chaotically, forecasters had to adjust where they thought the center of the storm was, meaning that there was a big-enough shift in the predicted track of the storm that I went from mildly to very concerned overnight. The experimental cone pictured above confused me at first, because it looks a little like there is still a more westerly prediction of landfall due to the old inland warnings being left in place.

I an now inclined to chalk that up to inexperience with the format, but I wonder if that was a common problem.

4. The Windy app/website has added a new model that will help hurricane trackers make better decisions. I noticed ICON, but didn't know what it was until I read the storm postmortem at The Eyewall:

AI modeling & ICON scores a big win

I went through and assessed the 15 model runs leading up to landfall from various models with Francine. Keep in mind that the landfall point is not the only variable that matters, but it's an important one. And one thing you cannot tolerate as a forecaster is a lot of whipping around within the models...

While the ICON kept western Louisiana in play for a while, it too corrected east in time. This, combined with its performance during Beryl (as well as last week with Invest 90L) made it another valuable tool. Will these models fail in the future? Yes, all models do. And the ICON remains prone to spurious tropical systems that never end up happening. But at this point, I think there's a lesson to be taken from this as a meteorologist. particularly when the models show this sort of stability. The GFS and Euro operational model (and the ensemble guidance) also performed respectably, but those models showed less consistency run to run than did the ICON and AIFS.

The Windy site explains what this high-performing model is.

-- CAV

P.S.: I would like to thank again the various readers who have told me about go-to storm tracking sites over the years, including at least Windy (brief review), the Tropical Tidbits blog (brief review), and The Eyewall, another blog.

Whoever 'Won,' America Lost

Editor's Note: Posting may be irregular due to impacts from Hurricane Francine, which will affect our area after making landfall this afternoon or evening. Thank you for your patience.

***

"Harris 'won' the debate, and is clearly lesser evil than Trump. But still sad these are options before us. Out of 330 million people, we should be able to do better. The thought of it almost makes want to eat a cat..." -- Ilya Somin

***

The Washington Examiner laid out what each candidate would need to do yesterday evening to win the presidential "debate:"

If Harris is going to turn the momentum of this race in her favor, she will need to do more than dole out pablum about a "new way forward." She must explain what her positions are, how they are different from Biden's, and why they are different from those of the far more left-wing Harris who ran against Biden in 2020.

...

For Trump, the plan should be simple, but that does not mean it will be easy for him to execute. All he has to do is remind voters that Harris is part of the Biden administration, which has been in government since 2021, that the Biden administration is unpopular for a reason, and that, if anything, Harris is further to the left of Biden on every issue.

These are all easily established facts, but Trump will be sorely tempted to denigrate Harris personally... [bold added]

This is not bad, but the bar was actually even lower for Trump. To paraphrase Yaron Brook, All Trump had to do was convince voters he's sane.

Close, Examiner, but no cigar.

The Examiner did nail another important bit of context:

... Tuesday's clash will be more significant than other presidential debates because Harris is intentionally unknown to most of the country. Whether they love or hate him, people know who Trump is and how he will govern. The same cannot be said of Harris. In the most recent New York Times poll showing Trump beating Harris 48% to 47%, 90% of voters said they "pretty much already know" what they need to know about Trump, but almost 30% of voters said they felt the need to "learn more" about Harris.

This is as close as a paper is going to get to a joke I recently saw on X/Twitter: I can't vote for Trump because I know what I'd get, and I can't vote for Harris because I don't know what I'd get.

I didn't watch the debate and probably wouldn't have, even if we didn't have a hurricane bearing down on our area, but if the video embedded below is any indication, Trump failed to pass the sanity/isn't a nut test.

Allegations of cat-eating may be red meat to the Trump base, but they will put off anyone with any sense.

Setting aside his unfitness for office, Trump's biggest problem is that, by choosing to pitch himself seemingly exclusively to kooks, he is repelling the sane undecideds he needs to win, and who will not necessarily know or care how far to the left Harris is. Her laughing when Trump babbles about pets being eaten is a direct parallel to his standing off to the side while a senile Biden blathered during that "debate."

No. I'm not going to waste my time on that silly new anti-immigrant trope. You can go here for that. (There is no time stamp or transcript as of this writing, but if I recall correctly, that discussion is early.)

-- CAV

Getting More Freedom Where You Can

Editor's Note: We're keeping a sharp eye on Tropical Storm Francine in these parts. Posting may be irregular due to storm-related contingencies. Thank you for your patience.

***

With the usual caveat that small-L libertarian is at best only an approximate description of my political philosophy, let me commend you to a very interesting post at Bryan Caplan's Substack, "DeAngelis Generalized."

Within, Caplan analyzes how education reform advocate Corey DeAngelis has helped move the needle towards such reforms as school choice at the state level across America -- and suggests generalizing the strategy to achieve other expansions of freedom.

And what strategy is that? Caplan puts it as follows:

Image by Jeffrey Hamilton, via Unsplash, license.

In The Parent Revolution, Corey DeAngelis argues that the key variable was a change in strategy. Stop trying to persuade your enemies. Instead, redouble your efforts on your friends.

...

In Red States:

• Push pro-freedom policies with conservative appeal using conservative rhetoric.
• Stop pushing pro-freedom policies with primarily progressive appeal.

In Blue States:

• Push pro-freedom policies with progressive appeal using progressive rhetoric.
• Stop pushing pro-freedom policies with primarily conservative appeal.

I know "stop pushing pro-freedom policies" never sounds good to libertarians. But the logic is sound. Resources are finite. Energy is finite. Friendship is finite. So use your resources, energy, and friendship in whatever way gets you the freest bang for your buck. [links omitted]

This DeAngelis did in response to the fact that, for example, in red states, appeals to Democrats weren't getting GOP holdouts to budge, while also failing to persuade Democrats to go against a major constituency (e.g., teachers unions).

The good of this is that it is a brilliant application of reframing to a political strategy Ayn Rand once recommended in her 1972 essay, "What Can One Do?"

The only groups one may properly join today are ad hoc committees, i.e., groups organized to achieve a single, specific, clearly defined goal, on which men of differing views can agree. In such cases, no one may attempt to ascribe his views to the entire membership, or to use the group to serve some hidden ideological purpose (and this has to be watched very, very vigilantly).

The groups seeking such measures as school choice may well often fit into such criteria.

Interestingly, Rand warned, in the previous paragraph of the same essay against the possible bad:

... Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to "do something." By "ideological" (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals. (E.g., the Conservative Party, which subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism; or the "libertarian" hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.) To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principles for the sake of some superficial political action which is bound to fail. It means that you help the defeat of your ideas and the victory of your enemies. (For a discussion of the reasons, see "The Anatomy of Compromise" in my book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.)

In the context of Caplan's post, what does all of this mean for an advocate of liberty? Be sure you judge a given measure to be pro-freedom and why, and if the opportunity presents itself, advocate a better version of it or help others see how it might fit into a larger pro-freedom picture.

Rand did this in her 1972 essay, "Tax Credits for Education":

I want to stress that I am not an advocate of public (i.e., government-operated) schools, that I am not an advocate of the income tax, and that I am not an advocate of the government's "right" to expropriate a citizen's money or to control his spending through tax incentives. None of these phenomena would exist in a free economy. But we are living in a disastrously mixed economy, which cannot be freed overnight. And in today's context, the above proposal would be a step in the right direction, a measure to avert an immediate catastrophe.

In addition, she explained at length in other work why she repudiated the Libertarian Party.

The strategy Caplan outlines is brilliant, but comes with the hazard of being wasted by "pro-liberty" elements that are less than fastidious in their thinking and propose policies that might seem pro-liberty, but not be, or that are not timely. (Some drug "legalization" attempts come to mind as an example of the latter: If addicts don't get punished for real crimes (such as trespassing) or pay for their own medical expenses, such an "experiment in freedom" will backfire and lend surface credibility to the idea that drugs should be prohibited.)

That said, today's left-right tribalism is a significant impediment to loosening the grip of the leviathan welfare state. This approach looks like it could alleviate the problem by leveraging the prejudices of each side to buy more time (in the form of slightly more freedom) for the cultural change that will need to occur before the politics can fundamentally improve.

-- CAV